CursorvsTrae
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Cursor
Anysphere · AI-native IDE
#12MCP
Panel
6.81 spec wins
- Reliability
- 7.0
- Usefulness
- 7.7
- Cost
- 5.5
- Longevity
- 6.8
“Twenty dollars a month, then 3x, then 20x, and the page never says 20x of what.”
Trae
ByteDance · AI-native IDE
#79MCP
Panel
5.92 spec wins
- Reliability
- 5.3
- Usefulness
- 6.2
- Cost
- 6.5
- Longevity
- 5.5
“The $3 Lite plan is the cheapest seat on this board, courtesy of a parent company that never needed you to pay for anything.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Cursor | Trae |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | AI-native IDE | AI-native IDE |
| Runs | local, cloud | local, cloud |
| Platforms | macos, linux, windows | macos, linux, windows |
| Context window | 200k default, up to 1M tokens on select models | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | No | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | Yes |
| Git operations | Yes | Yes |
| Browser control | Yes | YesAI can drive TraeCode's built-in browser tab - opening pages, clicking, filling forms and validating rendering - or an external Chrome instance, once enabled under Settings > Browser (https://docs.trae.ai/ide/browser-use). The built-in Chat agent cannot control the browser. |
| Sandboxed execution | Yes | YesAgent commands run in a restricted, isolated environment with per-project filesystem and network policy in ~/.trae/sandbox.json; Linux isolation is implemented via bubblewrap, and allowlisted command prefixes deliberately bypass the sandbox. |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | Yes | NoConfirmed false: Trae ships only the desktop IDE; no CLI, print/exec mode or CI runner appears anywhere in the documentation index. |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok, Composer, Kimi, GLM | Gemini, GPT, DeepSeek |
| Bring your own model | YesYour own keys reach the vendors' own models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) plus your own Azure OpenAI deployment or AWS Bedrock account; Tab completion always stays on Cursor's models. | Yes |
| Local models | NoCustom API keys are limited to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Azure OpenAI and AWS Bedrock, with no documented base URL override, so Ollama, LM Studio or a self-hosted endpoint cannot be pointed at. | YesThe custom-model flow accepts an arbitrary API format, request URL and key, so any self-hosted OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible endpoint works alongside the preset providers. |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | mixed | mixed |
| Starts at | $20/mo | $3/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | No | No |
| License | proprietary | proprietary |
| GitHub stars | n/a | n/a |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Cursor | Trae | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 7.8 | 6.8 | Cursor — The best editor experience today, with a subscription that turns into a meter the moment you push the agent hard. |
| El Crítico | 6.5 | 5.8 | Cursor — The sandbox is a property of the run mode you pick, and Run Everything drops it, while the pricing page turns limits into a ladder of tiers to climb. |
| El Profesor | 6.0 | 5.5 | Cursor — Well-engineered editor integration whose agent capabilities are asserted by a docs site and demonstrated by no published number. |
| La Inversora | 8.3 | 5.8 | Cursor — Real revenue, real pricing power, an in-house model, and a dependency on the labs it competes with for every frontier request. |
| La Jefa | 7.5 | 5.5 | Cursor — Teams at $40 per user with SSO, but SCIM, audit logs and auto-run controls sit behind a custom Enterprise quote. |
| El Hacker | 4.5 | 6.0 | Trae — Closed source, but any compatible endpoint with my own key, local models, an mcpServers config and subagents; more knobs than I expected from a ByteDance IDE. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.